ABSTRACT
The rise of the virtuoso pianist during the Romantic period led to a serious decline in the public's appreciation of quiet musicianship. Alicia de Larrocha began her career as an exacting but undemonstrative musician at the age of five with a private recital in her native Barcelona, where her small audience was composed of some friends of her teacher Frank Marshall, including the composer Joaquin Turina. De Larrocha's attitude toward the music remained what it always has been—intensely devotional and chaste. Possibly the recital would have been more fortunately realized in a smaller, more intimate setting. In any event, the reception by the audience was notably fervent. Casals's Orquesta Pau Casals gave its first concerts in 1920, three years before the birth of Alicia de Larrocha, and continued for seventeen years in Barcelona and other cities in Spain until the onset of the Spanish Civil War and Casals's permanent exile abroad.
